to come to him beforehand concerning their affairs, and showed them the things which were about to happen. And he told each one of them that which was done by him in secret, and he foretold concerning the rise of the river Nile, and the good crop which there would be as the result thereof, and described it unto them; and he declared and pointed out the time when the anger of God was about to come upon them, and rebuked those who were the cause of the same. Now the blessed man John did not himself work his cures openly, but he used to consecrate the oil and give [it] to those who were afflicted, and they were healed. Thus the wife of a certain nobleman had the light of her eyes taken away through the cataract which obstructed the light thereof, and she begged and entreated her husband to take her to him, and when he said unto her, “The blessed man hath never met a woman,” she besought him to have a message sent to the holy man asking him to offer up a prayer on her behalf; and this the blessed man did, and he also sent her some oil over which he had said a blessing and made the sign of the Cross, and when she had smeared her eyes therewith three times, after three days she was able to see. Then she praised God the Lord of all, and openly gave thanks unto Him always.
And what shall we say about his other deeds? [Nothing]. We can only tell of the things which we saw with our own eyes. Now there were of us seven brethren who were strangers, and who went to him all together, and having given us the salutation of peace with his glorious face, and shown his gladness [at seeing us] to each one of us, we asked him before anything else to offer up a prayer on our behalf, for it is the custom with all our fathers in Egypt to do this. Then he asked me if there was, perchance, a man among us who was a priest or deacon, and although we said there was none such among us all, he well knew that there was one among us who was hiding his honourable rank. Now there was among us one who had received the hand of deaconship, but only one of the brethren, and he was with us, knew of this, and the deacon, by reason of his humility, prohibited him from making this known to anyone, “For,” said he, “in comparison with these holy men I am not worthy to be called even Christian; permit me then not to make use of the honour of deaconship.” Then the blessed man pointed out to us all with his hand the deacon, and said, “This brother is a deacon”; whereupon the deacon denied this repeatedly, thinking to lead us astray, but the blessed man grasped the hand of the deacon through the window, and kissed it, and begged him, rebuking him at the same time, saying, “Wrong not the grace of God, O my
